To think universities overwhelmingly prefer to hire internally?

[TheExternalCandidate]

I’ve applied for a few university roles recently and have started to notice a pattern - they seem to overwhelmingly go to internal candidates.

I don’t mean people who are necessarily doing the exact job already but often someone who’s worked in the department in some form (admin, temp, secondment, associate lecturer, etc). Even when it’s a publicly advertised post and the panel are “keen to widen the pool,” it often feels like a formality.

I completely understand valuing someone who already knows the systems and culture but if that’s the plan, be upfront about it. Don’t make external candidates jump through hoops if the outcome was basically pre-decided.

AIBU to think the whole process is often performative, especially in universities?

And if you have managed to get hired externally, how did you manage it?

My DH got hired externally because he was one of the fewer than ten people in the world who can do that job. Then he got a manager who was jealous of the attention my DH got as a trailblazing researcher, so he treated my DH badly and was then surprised that my DH got another job. His university has slid down in the rankings since he left which anyone knew beforehand would be the result but ....

I don’t think it’s unique to universities. Everyone I know has this problem in their field…

I think there’s a difference between how they hire admin and how they appoint academics to be honest. Every academic in our department was appointed externally. However currently every university has faced voluntary and involuntary redundancy so any jobs that come up now are internal positions anyway. That’s not a preference it’s that they have no choice. You can’t make people redundant on one hand then appoint external candidates on the other.

Actually completely the opposite IME for academic posts.

They prefer to hire from outside and it's the internal candidates that get skipped over.

Presumably because they want to bring in people with different experience to strengthen the knowledge base.

If you are a post doc looking for say a lecturer position you nearly always have to move unless you have something extremely strong going for you.

This happens all over education, and probably other industries too. I’m sure most employers would prefer not to have the time and expense of looking for external hires, but they have to because of employment law.

Come over to the University Common Room board and post with a bit more detail on the job you want. Some jobs are more likely to be internal than others.

In most cases they don't though. You have to advertise externally for headteachers, but I've never heard of it being compulsory in any other field.

Where I work (not a university) it's policy to recruit internally whenever possible. It reduces advertising and recruitment costs, means you get someone in post quicker, encourages staff motivation (if promotion seems achievable) and above all means you are not taking a risk on an unknown person - we've all worked with disastrous hires. If anything I'd have thought academic posts would be more open than some places.

All my postdoc appointments were at the same uni where I did my 1st and subsequent degrees. If you are saavy you learn how the organization works and how to make the right alliances. My last bos said he wished he could clone me because he knew he could rely on me to get the work done.

I also don’t think you can compare schools to universities. They operate in very different ways.

I've definitely experienced the same situation as @GasPanic where recruiting managers activity prefer to employ new faces to internal candidates.

However, the landscape has completely changed and jobs are now so scarce (where I work anyway) it's often internal only applicants or there are lots of internal staff going for different roles because their previous jobs have changed with restructures.

It's always been difficult to get into universities - took me years to get a permanent contract (professional service role) and due to all the cutbacks it's just become even harder!!

It happens a lot at the moment since practically every university has redundancies going on. They are legally obliged to prioritise those who are at risk of redundancy.

For professional services roles, if they had someone internal they had earmarked they would just do expressions of interest if possible, or internal only. If someone internal gets an externally advertised role then they aren't the preferred candidate, they are just the most appointable one, which is generally easier to be if you have already worked there.